Ex-Heisman Winner Troy Smith Arrested on DUI and Drug Charge

Former pro football quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith was arrested early on Sunday on suspicion of marijuana possession and driving under the influence, police said.

Smith, 31, was pulled over around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, according to a police report.

Smith won the Heisman in 2006 as a quarterback at Ohio State University. He played three seasons with the Baltimore Ravens and one with the San Francisco 49ers in 2010. He is now living in Westerville after a brief stint in the Canadian Football League.

Police said they began to follow Smith’s 2014 Lincoln after officers noted that the car had no front license plate, was awkwardly stopped at a traffic light, and then appeared to be weaving within the lane, the report said.

When the vehicle made a right turn that was too wide, police pulled him over, authorities said.

“Smith said something that sounded like he said he was an officer,” police wrote in the report. “I asked him if he was a police officer, and he said ‘I’m great.'”

The officer said he could smell alcohol and burnt marijuana, the report said.

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After Smith failed a field sobriety test, officers arrested him and searched his car, finding two rolled cigars with marijuana in them inside the center console of the car, the report said.

Smith was charged with operating a vehicle impaired, possession of marijuana, and improper display of license plates. He was booked and then released to his girlfriend.

Why Alabama’s Nick Saban Is One of the World’s Greatest Leaders

The staff of Fortune and a panel of experts recently assembled our annual list of the World’s Greatest Leaders. Here’s a profile of one of them.

The dynasty was over. That was the consensus of the pundits after Alabama’s 43–37 loss to Ole Miss in its third game of the season last September. The famed “process” that Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban, 64, had used to win three national titles in football at Bama—while boosting graduation rates—and one at LSU had run its course, and the competition had caught up. Saban challenged his team: “How are you going to respond?” When Alabama defeated Clemson 45–40 for another title on Jan. 11, 2016, he had his answer, and the dynasty—and Saban’s legacy as a leader—remained intact.

Virtual Reality Makes a Play To Tackle Football at SXSW

Bret Bielema, head football coach at the University of Arkansas, isn’t afraid to try something new when it comes to improving his team. But he likes to see results.

So last season, Arkansas Razorback quarterback Brandon Allen gave Bielema what he was looking for in the form of virtual reality.

Allen, who will be part of this year’s NFL draft, spent his last year at the school not only working hard on the field, but working just as hard at improving his team leadership skills in the team’s virtual reality simulations.

“The kid went from a very average quarterback to quarterback of the SEC this year,” Bielema told a panel at South by Southwest.

Arkansas uses Strivr, a sports-focused VR company founded by a former assistant coach from Stanford. The system positions a camera on the field during practices, enabling players (primarily quarterbacks) and coaches to later relive the plays as many times as necessary in order to get a better grasp of what they should be observing and learning on the field.

Best of all, when you’re playing in a VR headset, the tackles hurt a lot less.

“When we get in the video room and we can literally have a player see everything without moving his feet or his body, that’s invaluable for us without any wear and tear on the body,” explained Bielema.

That’s good news for Strivr co-founder Derek Belch. The company is rapidly becoming the choice for both college and pro athletes. Today, five NFL teams and nine college programs use the company’s product. Last year at the NFL’s Combine, it filmed 20,000 plays for clients.

Strivr is expanding into other sports as well, already signing on the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals.

“I will never sit here and say a quarterback is better just because of VR,” he asserted. “It’s a piece of the puzzle. … But when [a player] is saying ‘I saw it coming from the other night in VR,’ something’s going on.”

VR’s benefits to athletics programs aren’t limited to on-field performance either. The University of Arkansas decided to use VR to make a recruiting film for potential players showing what it was like to be part of the Razorback program. On a whim, they decided to use that same VR experience at a fundraiser.

“There was a little old lady, maybe 85 years old, who always dreamed of playing quarterback for the University of Arkansas,” said Bielema. “She came over, put on the headset and then wrote us a check for $100,000.”

That money could be used to deepen the VR training. If so, Bielema admitted he wouldn’t mind.

“When you literally give a player something in their toolbox that makes them better, it’s very addicting to me,” he reflected. “I think that’s what we’re doing. You can see them grow.”

Iowa Senator Introduces Bill on Stanford Band Controversy

After the Stanford band’s halftime performance at the 2016 Rose Bowl, which made fun of Iowa’s agricultural history, angered both Iowa fans and Rose Bowl officials, an Iowa senator has taken measures to summon a public apology.

Senator Mark Chelgren introduced a bill on Wednesday that would ban any partnership between Stanford and University of Iowa, Iowa State or Northern Iowa until an apology is issued for the performance.

“The state board of regents shall prohibit any future collaboration or cooperation between the institutions of higher learning governed by the board and Stanford university, excluding sporting events, until Stanford university officials publicly apologize to Iowa’s citizens and to the university of Iowa for the unsporting behavior of the Leland Stanford junior university marching band,” the bill states.

However, the Des Moines Registerreports that the chair of the Iowa Senate’s Education Committee disagrees with Chelgren‘s stance on the issue.

“Stanford University is one of the premier research universities in the world and for us to cut off contact with Stanford over something that happened on a football field I think sinks to a level that would be unworthy of our fine research institutions,” said Senator Herman Quirmbach, who is an economics professor at Iowa State.

Senator Robert Dvorsky, the chairman of the Iowa Senate Appropriations Committee voiced similar concerns over the bill, stating that he does not think the institution of Stanford University should be blamed.

This is not the first time the Stanford band has been criticized. Fans were also angry with the band’s Rose Bowl performances in 2013 and 2014.

Bowl Games, Puerto Rico’s Debt, and a New Year — 5 Things to Watch in the Week Ahead

This week closes the door on 2015, as we enter a new year when the clock strikes midnight on Thursday night. Two European leaders who have each had eventful years will address their respective nations this week, while U.S. investors will be watching a few economic reports due to be released and Puerto Rico’s creditors will be watching the island commonwealth’s repayment deadline. Also, before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, college football fans will be watching to see which teams earn the chance to play for a collegiate national championship.

Here’s what you need to know for the week ahead.

1. 2016

U.S. and European markets will be closed on Friday, Jan. 1 for New Year’s Day. While they wait for the calendar to switch over, consumers will be hitting up post-holiday sales from retailers who suffered from lower holiday spending than was expected this year. The bright spot for retailers may be that consumers are expected to spend more overall in 2016, thanks to increased personal income in the U.S. And, on New Year’s Eve, the bulk of television audiences are expected to tune in once again for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. The countdown special, now hosted by Ryan Seacrest, has aired on Disney’s DIS ABC network every year since 1974 and regularly wins the night’s television ratings battle with rival programs on Fox FOX and NBC CMCSA.

German chancellor Angela Merkel delivers her address for the new year in Berlin on Wednesday. Merkel is wrapping up a year in which she was named TIME magazine’s 2015 Person of the Year for her role in dealing with crises over refugees in Europe and Greek debt. The following day, French president Francois Hollande will make a year-end address to his own nation on television less than two months after Islamic terrorists killed 130 people in attacks in Paris.

3. College football

College football’s postseason is in full swing, with a full slate of bowl games scheduled every day of the upcoming week. The highlight will be Thursday’s New Year’s Eve playoff games featuring Clemson University against the University of Oklahoma and Michigan State University against the University of Alabama. The pair of playoff games, which will determine which teams face off in the national championship game on Jan. 11, have been lucrative for the Bowl Championship Series, as the group signed a 12-year, $7 billion television contract with ESPN three years ago.

4. Economic data: Jobless claims, consumer confidence

A handful of economic data reports are set for release this week, including a Tuesday report from S&P/Case Schiller that is expected to single-family home prices in the U.S. grew at a slower pace in October than in the previous month. That same day, the consumer confidence index is likely to rise for December to 93.6 after posting the lowest reading in more than a year, 90.4, in November. On Thursday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the number of Americans who filed new applications for unemployment benefits last week increased by 3,000 claims.

5. Puerto Rico interest payments

Puerto Rico faces an end-of-year deadline to pay off more than $950 million in interest payments to investors, lest the commonwealth default on its debt. The official deadline for the payment is Friday, but Puerto Rico will have until Monday due to the New Year holiday. The commonwealth’s governor has said it will be “almost impossible” to make the payment in time and the island’s government has asked the U.S. Congress to grant Puerto Rico bankruptcy powers.

A Heisman win comes with no financial reward, but it can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools — in extra donations, ticket sales, licensing fees, sponsorship deals and more. As for the players? There is no such bonanza guaranteed, according to ESPN.

College football has long been big business. The 65 schools that comprise the top five conferences pulled in $3.17 billion in revenue in 2014 alone, according to a Fortune analysis of Department of Education data. That’s an average of $48.8 million per institution.

To make those revenue numbers, these big schools pay their head coaches well, making them the biggest individual winners of all. Here are the salaries of the ten highest paid head football coaches, using data compiled by USA Today. They are all the top paid public employees in their states except for Kevin Sumlin, head coach at Texas A&M University, and that’s only because Charlie Strong at the University of Texas makes more. Also listed is the average pay for the nine full-time assistant coaches for each team.

When Will ESPN’s Subscriber Numbers Finally Hit Bottom?

One of the strongest parts of Walt Disney Corp.—in addition to its powerful hold on Hollywood through Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Marvel—is the sports network, ESPN. It makes up a huge proportion of Disney’s $200 billion market value, and when it reports what investors see as weak results, it doesn’t just hurt Disney’s share price, it takes the rest of the TV-related market down with it. But there are those who think the weakness has only just begun for ESPN.

Hedge fund manager and analyst Eric Jackson is one of those who thinks ESPN has further to fall when it comes to subscriber and revenue numbers. In a recent installment of his email newsletter, Jackson looked at the steady decline in users who pay for ESPN and the impact on Disney’s bottom line.

Jackson points out that based on the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, ESPN’s subscriber base peaked at 99 million in 2013. According to Nielsen, the current number is about 92 million. That drop in subs has meant a substantial corresponding fall in ESPN’s profitability, since it is getting less in affiliate fees from cable companies and satellite broadcasters.

The sports broadcasting giant added a new network called SEC Network last year, which focuses on college sports in the Southeastern Conference, but the overall trend for viewership remains down, as cord cutting by millennials continues to accelerate.

Analysts like SNL Kagan believe that ESPN gets about $6.60 for every core ESPN subscriber, and anywhere from 22 to 83 cents for each subscriber to its other networks, such as ESPN 2 and the SEC Network. The loss of 7 million or so subscribers since 2013 means that ESPN is now getting $650 million less in affiliate revenues, Jackson says—the majority of which is pure profit. The company is also estimated to be making about $250 million less in advertising because of its shrinking reach.

In other words, ESPN is generating close to $1 billion less than it did two years ago. SEC Network has helped defray that somewhat, but not by a huge amount. And the sports network is crucial to Disney’s bottom line—the media networks unit had operating income of $7.3 billion last year, the bulk of which was generated by ESPN, and that unit accounted for more than 55% of Disney’s operating income last year.

Did ESPN or Disney see the cord-cutting decline coming? It doesn’t look that way, despite predictions from a number of market watchers that it was a sizable risk. The sports network reportedly spent $125 million or so on a revamp of the Sports Center set, which seems like an odd investment if you think your viewership is going to fall. Former Grantland editor Bill Simmons also said on a recent podcast that he never heard ESPN executives talking about their concerns about cord cutting until last year.

Of course, cord cutting could be a cyclical thing, and ESPN may not continue losing millions of subscribers every year. But what if it does? As the range of sporting events that are available from other providers increases, and TV watchers are more interested in a la carte offerings rather than a cable bundle, ESPN’s power will wane. And as its subscriber base dissolves, its affiliates will start to put pressure on the company to cut its fees, which means revenue and earnings could slide south at an even faster rate than the overall subscriber numbers.

There has been some talk of an ESPN over-the-top streaming service, and Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that he believes large numbers of people would pay a significant fee for such a service. But how many? And what kind of monthly fee would be involved? Those are the key factors that would determine whether ESPN could make such an offering fly. And it’s entirely possible that the network could have a successful service, but still not make enough from it to compensate for the drop-off in conventional cable subscribers and affiliate revenue.

The almost certain success of the upcoming Star Wars movie from Lucasfilm and other movie properties could bridge the gap for a while, but there’s no sign that the trend of cord cutting and OTT is going to end anytime soon. If anything, it is accelerating. If you notice investors reacting nervously to Disney results, that’s why.

College Football: Campus Activism’s New (and Old) Hot Spot

When Hillary Clinton was asked about campus protests at last Saturday’s presidential debate, the Democratic frontrunner said, “I come from the ‘60s, a long time ago. There was a lot of activism on campus.”

While she might have been equivocating so she didn’t have to take a stand for or against the “Black Lives Matter” activism on campus—or might have just been overcome by nostalgia for her college years—Clinton’s remarks harkened back to an era of turmoil across the country.

Recent protests by student athletes and others may appear novel because there have been few major campus demonstrations in recent years. Students have been concentrating on getting jobs in a rocky economy, and their parents have been worried about education’s high price tag.

But four decades ago, protests were more routine. Students were galvanized by protests against the Vietnam War and against racism.

As is the case today, there were few effective ways to pressure university administrators. One of the few routes to change—then, as now—was college athletics, where players often take on outsize importance in shaping the university’s image and, increasingly, the university’s finances.

College football has become a powerhouse moneymaker for many universities, with colleges reaping huge financial rewards as passionate alumni and other fans are able to watch most games on television. When the University of Missouri stood to lose $1 million or so from a threatened strike by its football team earlier this month, the administration hastily made changes so it did not jeopardize its golden egg.

While complaints against racial incidents on campus is hardly new, the Missouri athletes’ activism was hailed by many—and roundly criticized by others—as a new student protest technique. But that ignores history: In fact, the threat of boycotts and protests harkens back to similar student athlete protests held on campuses in the 1960s.

Those protests met with mixed results.

At Syracuse University in 1969, for example, eight African-American players, sometimes called the “Syracuse Eight,” walked out of spring practice complaining of discriminatory treatment. They demanded that their coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, hire a full-time black coach. When he didn’t, the players decided to boycott.

Under order, Schwartzwalder did hire an African-American coach. But he also refused to allow seven of the players to rejoin the team the next season. And so, even though university protests against racism in 1968 and 1969 had led to the hiring of a vice president for minority group affairs and the addition of an Afro-American Studies program, the athletes’ boycott ended with the university hiring a black coach for a team that, in the 1970 season, had no black players.

The Syracuse protest is one of many examined in Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights in American Football, a book by Lane Demas, a history professor at Central Michigan University.

In the book, he singles out the importance of the 1969 protest at the University of Wyoming, when 14 of the team’s black players were kicked off the team because they wanted to wear black armbands during an upcoming game against Brigham Young University. The armbands were to protest the Mormon Church’s discrimination against black people.

That same season, 14 black players on the San Jose State team wanted to show solidarity by wearing black armbands. But the university canceled the game, citing racial unrest.

Whether it was boycotts or armbands, those players were following precedents already set in the mid-1960s. In 1967, a number of black players for the University of California football team had adopted one of those tactics—boycotting spring practice—until they won their demand that more black coaches be hired. The university complied and that same year hired John W. Erby, a star college football player and disabled Vietnam War veteran, as the first African-American coach in the Pacific Coast conference.

Other players followed suit, notably those at Michigan State in 1968, and often were able to parlay their public image and financial importance to their universities into policy changes.

It is too early to tell whether the most recent actions of the Missouri players will rekindle civil rights activism and bring about change in racial practices and policies on campus. Since the Missouri action, more campuses have seen protests against bigotry, but whether the student athletes will prevail is still unclear.

Mizzou Football Shows the Power of Student Labor

This past week, all eyes turned on Columbia, Missouri, as the actions of University of Missouri students, and particularly student athletes, resulted in the resignation of Mizzou’s president, a national debate over the limits of free speech and, to some, a fight for the soul of the American university.

Last weekend, black members of Mizzou’s football team announced that they would not participate in team activities or games until University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe stepped down. The move was an act of support for campus activists calling for Wolfe’s resignation, arguing that the administrator hadn’t adequately responded to incidents of racism on campus.

No matter where you fall on the issues, one thing is undeniable: American student athletes, and campus populations more broadly, are wielding their power with more force than they have in a long time.

American higher education, of course, is no stranger to student protests. In last week’s Democratic candidates forum, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow showed a picture of candidate Bernie Sanders taking part in a sit-in to convince the University of Chicago to desegregate its housing. In 1968, students at Columbia University occupied a number of university buildings to protest the university’s ties to the war in Vietnam.

Since the the 1960s, though, student activism has largely gone the way of bell bottoms. Robert McCaughey, a history professor at Barnard who has studied the history of American universities, said that competition among students and high tuition rates discourage activism. He says that this trend has persisted throughout the last century, with the student-led opposition to the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s serving as anomalies.

This decade, though, student social activism has seen a resurgence. Some, as the New York Times wrote in 2012, attribute it the popularity of the Occupy Movement. Occupy didn’t start on campus, but it galvanized many young people and was dedicated to causes that college students flock to: social justice, economic equality, and combatting racism.

McCaughey, though, doesn’t see a significant increase in student power. He points out that the protests at Mizzou had been going on for weeks, but it didn’t garner national attention or have any impact until one group of particularly powerful students—the football team—got involved.

“I think it does not suggest a rise in student power overall, but rather a vulnerability that universities that are playing big-time sports [have],” McCaughey said.

Writing for The Nation, Dave Zirin noted that in a college sports landscape in which athletes are often viewed simply as pawns, players at Mizzou have demonstrated that without their labor, the dollars stop:

So much of the political and social economy of state universities is tied to football, especially in big-money conferences like Southeastern Conference, where Mizzou plays. The multibillion-dollar college football playoff contracts, the multimillion-dollar coaching salaries, and the small fortunes that pour into small towns on game day don’t happen without a group of young men willing to take the field. The system is entirely based on their acceptance of their own powerlessness as the gears of this machine. If they choose to exercise their power, the machine not only stops moving: It becomes dramatically reshaped.

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board ruled againstNorthwestern University football players who were trying to form a union. Just the same, the past week at Mizzou shows that student athletes can wield significant influence, with or without a regulator’s stamp of approval.

Why the NFL, NCAA, and MLB are closely monitoring Hurricane Joaquin

A major storm is brewing in the Atlantic Ocean, and a number of big sporting events could be affected over the weekend, meaning headaches and potential added costs for the likes of the MLB, NFL and NCAA.

The path of the storm — dubbed Hurricane Joaquin — is not yet certain, which is casting a “cone of uncertainty” over the weekend plans for millions of people who could be in the storm’s path when/if it makes landfall on the East Coast sometime in the next couple of days.

While forecasts are varied, it’s possible that Joaquin could dump 10 inches of water on the East Coast through the weekend, while Fortune reported yesterday that the storm’s economic impact in the region could cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars (in terms of damage, disrupted travel and production, and the impact on retailers) in a worst-case scenario.

For major sports leagues, Joaquin’s impact is also hanging over the upcoming weekend like a dark cloud (pun intended) that could force any number of baseball and football games to be delayed, postponed, or even moved to alternate venues.

The start times for some MLB games have already been moved, including Thursday games in Baltimore and Philadelphia originally scheduled for the evening but moved back to start earlier this afternoon (though the Orioles game featured a rain delay, regardless). In fact, the storm could even end up affecting baseball’s playoffs, with the New York Yankees set to finish their season with a three-game series in Baltimore over the weekend that could get washed out, thus delaying the Yankees from attempting to win home-field advantage in the American League wild-card playoff game.

Football games are more likely than baseball games to be played in spite of inclement weather, but both the NFL and the NCAA still face difficult decisions with the potential for dangerous amounts of rain and wind this weekend. Sunday’s game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins in D.C. could potentially be affected along with the University of Michigan’s Saturday game at the University of Maryland. The Maryland-Michigan game has already been moved back from an 8 p.m. start to noon, while CBS reports that the Eagles-Redskins game could be moved to a weekend next month when both teams have a bye scheduled. Duke University’s athletic department is even offering discounted tickets for the school’s Saturday game against Boston College depending on the forecast.

It is difficult to gauge the economic impact of moving or postponing any game on individual teams, especially considering that many professional teams have insurance policies that cover events such as weather-induced delays or relocation and can help them recoup the millions of dollars at stake in ticket, food and merchandise sales. Last year, a giant snowstorm in Buffalo forced the Bills to move their home game against the Cleveland Browns to a neutral location (Detroit’s Ford Field), at which point the team told reporters that both the Bills and the NFL carry insurance that would help recoup some of the lost revenue. What’s more, since there’s no chance the games will be canceled (as in, not played at all, ever), the teams don’t stand to lose out on the big payday that is revenue from the television rights for the games once they are eventually played.